Sunday, January 18, 2015

Rocksteady Attila: The Pig that Took Budapest by Storm.

We rarely use this blog to discuss the local Hungarian news. Other web sites do that so much better, and the last few months of Hungarian news has been crammed with tales of corruption, political intrigue, of rivalries between Our Great Infallible Leader and his former allies and room mates and his Swiss bank accounts and his new BFF Vlad Putin. We have had a series of demonstrations in support of a democratic Hungary led by people who can't wrap their heads around the notion of organizing a democratic opposition to participate in political change. On a more spiritual level, our Jewish community just fired the recently appointed community president, a former Catholic chorister, Evangelical deacon, and transsexual cabaret performer who was caught embezzling funds. It gets downright depressing at times. As Fela Kuti used to say "Oh my people... Oh my poor poor people." Then suddenly a news item pops up that puts everything else in perspective, something that overshadows the corruption charges and the political rivalries and the new taxes and the trannie Catholic Jewish community presidents and all the other random BS that fill the Hungarian 24 hour news cycle.

Rocksteady Attila running down Rakoczi ut.

Budapest is being taken over by wild pigs. Yes, wild boars roam the streets of the Hungarian capital at night, blithely running down the boulevards and sauntering past the fast food joints and the trolley stops. It is almost biblical in its apocalyptic sense of timing. And lo! The swine shall be seen in the streets of your city, Yea, even next to the McDonald's and that new store, ye know, the one where they verily sell the newest Gucci... If you don't live in Hungary you are really missing out on fun news. We have all the scandal and outrage of any small European nation... plus... wild pigs!

So sweet. So fat. So tasty. So crawling with parasites!

There actually are wild boars which live within the confines of the city of Budapest: out in the hills of Buda there are special parks and reserved areas set aside just for the animals. Obnoxious upper class twits - you know the type, dressed in green wool and wearing Austrian hunters' hats - join clubs to "hunt" these semi tame porkers out in the suburbs, luring them in with baited corn and blasting at them from elevated platforms in what many assholes call "a noble sport." A few of the wiser pigs opt out of the sport and take their chances in more urban contexts, digging under the fences to freedom. But they rarely wander into downtown, and for some reason, there seem to be a lot of them all of a sudden. This was the situation with urban piggery last week.

Budapest has gone to the pigs.

The guys at snarky news website 444.hu have been tracing the swine explosion and had identified three main offenders and given them names. Pig Zrinyi and Pig Konfuciusz are both in Buda, where they probably arrived by following the green park lands down from the Buda hills and along the Danube to settle into relatively bucolic areas near the Novotel and Technical university. But my favorite is the Pig that Got to Pest, Rocksteady Attila. This fellow probably crossed one of the bridges spanning the Danube and has settled down in the area around the Vamhaz Market and Corvin university. This is one slick porker. But within a couple of days more wild pigs were sighted along both banks of the Danube (and have had names bestowed on them by the editors who love them.)

The invasion of Pest has begun!

Now, there isn't really a grave danger to the people of Budapest from any of these pigs - they probably feed on garbage and hide during the day, like so many local pensioners. Unless you are traipsing around the woods dressed like a dickwad in Austrian hunter clothes, attacks by wild boars are pretty rare, especially if they are not guarding any of their extremely cute baby pigs. Personally, since moving to Hungary I miss seeing large dangerous animals in urban settings. In the USA there are always news stories about bears walking into shopping malls in suburban New Jersey, about Moose - often insane moose driven violently mad by weird fly larva growing in their ears - sauntering into New England mill towns and attempting to have sex with cars. A Rutgers college student was eaten by bears last September in suburban West Milford, New Jersey, about a twenty five minute drive from New York City. I used to have to contend with a large raccoon that used to walk into our house - by opening the back door, of course - and help itself to the cat food bowl when I lived in downtown Boston, way back in the 20th century.

Rocksteady Attila on the run!

In fact, considering how much pork the average Hungarian family eats in a year one should think that these wild swine should be running as far away from centers of Hungarian population as possible. Most people in Budapest know wild boar mainly as an item on restaurant menus. Are these innocent wild pigs putting themselves in danger, blindly fleeing into a teeming pit of ravenous humanoids hungry for pig? And when will these poor misplaced swine finally be resettled into an environment more conducive to their rooting, nomadic lifestyles? Only then will our news outlets be able to return to those simple, pigless political stories about the swine who remain.

2 comments:

It is karma. It takes pigs a bit longer to assimilate the political atmosphere but finally they recognized some of their own, their spiritual brethren in power in Budapest and crossed the river to be with them. Wild boar are self-absorbed, arrogant, vicious, selfish, bent of self-promotion. They fear no one and seek out trouble. Sound familiar ?

That pig on Rakoczi utca doesn't look to me as if it is sauntering so much as swaggering. I can hardly wait to get home to see if it's set up shop in my house rubbish bin - barely a stone's throw away.